Contents

History

The decision to build a high-speed railway between Paris,
Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam was made in 1987. On 28 January
1993,[2] SNCF,
NMBS/SNCB, NS and DB signed an agreement to jointly operate the
axis through the brand Thalys, and in 1995 Westrail
International was created by the French and Belgium
national railways to operate the services. On 4 June 1996 the first
train left Paris, taking 2:07 hours to Brussels and 4:47 hours to
Amsterdam.[3]

On 14 December 1997 the LGV
Nord and HSL 1 lines opened,
allowing the travel time from Paris to Brussels to be reduced to
1:25 hours. At the same time service commenced to Cologne and Aachen in Germany, and Bruges, Charleroi, Ghent, Mons, Namur and Ostend in Belgium. On 19 December
1998 the Thalys Neige service started to the ski resorts of Tarentaise
Valley and Bourg St.
Maurice. In May 1999, the new high-speed line serving Charles de Gaulle Airport opened, and
Thalys started direct services from the Airport to Brussels,
including code sharing agreements with Air France, American
Airlines and Northwest Airlines. On 28 November
1999, the company changed its name to Thalys International. In
2000, the Thalys Soleil started services to the summer resort Valence—this
service was extended in 2002 to Marseille and Avignon. In 2003, services started to Brussels
International Airport and the Thalys Nuits d’Eté service to Marne-la-Vallée. Deutsche Bahn
purchased 10% of the company in 2007.[3]
Since 14 June 2009 the journey between Brussels and Cologne has
been shorter by nineteen minutes when a new high speed line (HSL 3)
between Liège and Aachen opened. The new high-speed line was
initially only used by Deutsche Bahn's thrice-daily ICE trains
running between Brussels and Frankfurt. Although HSL 3 was
completed in 2007, Thalys trains had at this time not yet been
equipped with the modern signalling equipment necessary to use the
new line. As a result, Thalys did not operate on the new link until
December 13, 2009. For this same reason, Thalys did not start
operating on the HSL 4/HSL-Zuid high-speed line
between Antwerp and
Amsterdam until 13 December 2009.

Routes

Beyond Brussels, the
main cities Thalys trains reach are Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Liège, Bruges, Ghent, Charleroi, Aachen and Cologne. Trains to these destinations run
partly on dedicated high-speed tracks, and partly on conventional
tracks shared with normal-speed trains. The high-speed lines used
by Thalys are HSL 1 between
Paris and Brussels, HSL 4 and HSL-Zuid between Antwerp and
Amsterdam, and the HSL 2 and HSL 3 between Brussels and Aachen.
For its seasonal operations within France, other high-speed lines
are used.

The LGV (ligne à grande
vitesse) link with Charles de Gaulle Airport allowed Air
France to withdraw its air service between Paris and Brussels;
instead, Air France books seats on Thalys trains.[6] Thalys
has been given the IATA designator 2H. This is used in
conjunction with American Airlines and Northwest Airlines. American
Airlines has a code sharing agreement with Thalys for rail service
from Charles de Gaulle airport to Brussels-South. The airline
allianceSkyTeam also
has a code sharing agreement with Thalys for rail service from
Amsterdam's Schiphol
Airport to Antwerp-Centraal and Brussels South Charleroi
Airport.

Rolling
stock

Thalys uses two models of trains, both of which are part of the
TGV (train à grande
vitesse) family of high-speed trains built by Alstom in France.

Accidents and Incidents

On 9 May 1998 a truck was struck by a Thalys PBKA on an
unprotected level crossing; it had attempted to cross the tracks at
the crossing when the train arrived. The truck driver was killed in
the impact and the train's power unit and first two trailers
derailed; the trainset was left heavily damaged. Six passengers
were injured and tracks and catenary were broken in the incident.
Trailers R1 and R2 had to be scrapped. The trainset was later
repaired with the R1 and R2 trailers from a regular TGV
trainset.

On 11 October 2008 a Thalys PBA set bound for Amsterdam
collided with a local ICM train set at Gouda station in The
Netherlands. The Thalys train set had been diverted via Gouda due
to engineering work on its usual route. None of the passengers was
seriously injured, but both trains incurred serious damage. An
investigation concluded that staff of the local ICM was partly to
blame as they left the platform whilst still under a red
signal.[7][8]